The Dracul Alliance
by falconlord5
Summary: Voldemorte has made an unpardonable mistake: he has attracted the attention of the Vampires. Now he must suffer the consequences...


The cloaked men gathered outside the door. One of the men checked his watch; if this was going to go off, it had to be precise, no mistakes allowed. It was five to six. He nodded at the man in front. _Rap, rap, rap_ in quick succession. If their information was good, the only people inside would be the manager and his secretary, closing up shop for the day. If they were wrong, they were very dead.

"Hello? How can I help you?" the man who answered the door was fat and balding, a cardsharp's peak pulled over his horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a dark green vest and starched white shirt, with brown trousers and a plain belt. The consummate bookkeeper.

The man in front pointed his wand at the bookkeeper. With a flash of green light, he fell over dead. His secretary came into the room and started screaming. Another flash of green light silenced her, but already her screams had shortened their timetable. They would have to move fast. The man with the watch moved into the office and sealed the door behind him. The rest of the men split up, going from room to room, turning over chairs, pulling out drawers, breaking down doors. The man checked his watch. He didn't know if that woman's screams had alerted the rest of her neighbours, if they had already called the police. Official response times were iffy; you could have a hot young star, eager to make his mark. Or you could have an old cynic; been working the streets to long to give a damn. Of course, they were complicated by how dangerous the streets were too; he thought of Cheapside as being relatively safe, but not everyone had the same advantages he did. Thirty seconds. "Time," he called, his voice slightly raspy. He wanted to be out of here before the police showed up. The rest got the message; they all Disapparated out. The man with the watch was the last one; as a final touch he muttered "morsmordre" and left. The scene was set; all hell was about to break loose.

Constable John 'Jackie-boy' O'Brian had been a member of the London Metro Police for nearly eleven years. He was a good cop; competent, hard-working, knew how the streets worked. He also knew how the politics worked, how the raises were never enough to keep a growing family. So when someone approached him and offered twenty-thousand a week to keep an eye out for anything unusual; he didn't see a problem with it. With an extra twenty-thousand a week, he could send his kids to school, maybe take a vacation every once in a while. And it wasn't as if he was doing anything illegal; that was just how the streets worked. When he got to the little bookkeeping on Cheapside, he knew he would he earn that twenty-thousand.

The place was a mess; chairs upturned, desks turned inside out. But what made it truly unusual was the giant green skull and snake light show directly above the crime scene. Adjusting his belt, he said, "if it's alright with you lads, I just got to call me missus. I think it's going to be a long one."

The other constables nodded; they wouldn't be able to do anything till the crime scene boys were finished anyway. O'Brian turned around the corner to find a working payphone; he hated cell phones, they were too big and bulky. As he did so, he heard a set of cars pull up. Probably MI5 or 6, he thought with a grim chuckle. Another turf war, just what they needed. Didn't anyone speak for the victims anymore? Well, maybe his friend on the end of the line would. He heard it ring three times; no more, no less. Easy way to identify a fraud.

"Yeah?" the other voice sounded as it always tired, with a hint of too much whisky in former years.

"Ya recognize my voice?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, I got something for you. Little bookkeeping racket, down in Cheapside, belongs to the Good Lady? Well, it got hit; both the manager and his assistant are dead, and there's a giant, green skull and snake combo floating about in the air, you know like what we were seeing all those years ago? Anyway the place has been ransacked; no telling yet if they were looking for something or if they were just vandals."

A stunned silence echoes across the phone line. Around the corner, Jackie-boy can just make out the word "Obliviate," and something else that he can't quite understand, but he knows what it means. His nephew's one of those freaks, and he told him all about the Ministry of Magic and their habit of wiping people's memories. A good lad was Tommy; he didn't hold with such things. Leaning a little closer into the phone, O'Brian continued, "and I think someone's interfering, if you get my drift." John was sure he would; he had been dealing with the man at the other end of the phone for nearly his entire career, and he was convinced that the other man knew about this other world.

"Yeah, I understand. Are you sure about that Mark?"

"Mark? You mean that thing in the sky? Yeah, I'm sure. Hard to mistake, you know?"

"Yeah. Alright, thanks. Keep on it will you? Little something extra for you at Christmas this year."

No reason to continue the conversation; but he still had to stay out of the way until those Ministry chaps were out of the way; he didn't want to have his memory erased and fed some lie to keep him ignorant; no sir, not him. He'd outwit these rats, and bring the culprits to justice. Lighting a cigarette, he waited until he heard the cars move off. His daughters were always at him to quit, but he needed to do something with his hands until the men in black moved off. Bloody conspiracies, getting in the way of a murder investigation. He understood the need to keep out of the limelight; if most people knew that wizards and witches were real, they'd have a conniption. Took him a while to get over it, and he considered himself open minded. But when it came to murder, shouldn't they be helping each other? Another reason why he passed along that kind of information to the fellow on the phone. At least some form of justice was being served. At last the cars moved away.

Jackie-boy strode up to where the rest of the police force, trying not wince at the dazed looks on their faces. "So, what's the verdict, boys?" he asked, stubbing out the cigarette.

"Gas leak," one of them grunted.

"Gas leak, eh?" he grinned, doing his best to keep the acid out of his voice. "That's good, means I'll be home for dinner." Turning to his partner, he added, "You look like shite, mate. Maybe I ought to drive?"

"Mrs. Van Helsing?" the voice carries a strong Dutch accent; the head as it pops through the door is small and blonde.

"Ah, Mr. Jansen. Please, come in." The other person in the room is female; hidden behind a large, cherry wood desk, most of her figure cannot be discerned. The dress, at least is Victorian, the hairstyle Edwardian. Her lips are smooth and bright red; the teeth a gleaming white. There is an old-fashioned typewriter on the desk; an equally antiquated fob watch beside it. She herself is writing with a goose quill, but the paper is loose leaf. Mr. Jansen stands fidgeting in front of her; he has bad news, and she a bad temper.

Finally she gazes up from her paper. "What is it Mr. Jansen?" her voice like a bullwhip. He could well imagine her a terrifying school mistress in her early days. "It has been confirmed. Voldemort has hit von of your bookkeeping operations." He handed her a file. "We first heard about it from a police officer on your payroll..."

"An officer who has somehow managed to avoid Ministry detection for nearly eleven years," the Good Lady commented, her eyes scanning the information before her.

"Ja. It vas my understanding that he has a nephew with the gift," returned the man. "At any rate, ve have been able to confirm most of the information he has passed along."

"I know; I wasn't questioning the source, merely commenting." She smiled, transforming her mouth into something sweet and kind. "Relax minister. You get any more nervous, and I won't be able to understand you, your accent will be so thick."

The Dutch Minister for Magic smiled sheepishly at his benefactor. "After our friend in the police telephoned us the information, Dumbledore confirmed it. It would appear that one of his Auror friends heard about the case, and passed it along."

"And what is our dear friend Mr. Fudge going to do about this?"

Jansen snorted. "The usual. Coward, he refuses to do anything. He has already put pressure on the Daily Prophet to keep any whispers about Voldemort's return out of the public's ear. The word has been passed down; it was nothing, a prank that got out of hand, nothing more."

Lady Van Helsing leaned back in her chair. "Let slip the dogs of war," she whispered, knowing in her heart of hearts that Tom Marvolo Riddle had nothing to do with this, that the orders to hit her bookkeepers had originated in New York, with a monster among monsters, a killer of killers.

"Ma'am?"

Shocked out of her reverie, Mina turned towards her friend. The opposite of Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic Piet Jansen was a brave man, a formidable political opponent. True, he was prone to nerves, and relied heavily on his speech writer, but he was a man of action through and through. Better men were hard to find. "I'm alright, my friend. But, if you please, I'm going to have to decide what to do about this, and you probably don't want to know."

Jansen smiled. "No, I probably don't. Good day, madam."

The Good Lady waited until he left her office, then commed her secretary. "Would you be so kind as to call the General, Sir William and Ms. Willems to my office, please?"

General Ivan Slim had never actually been a general in real life; during the Crimean War, he had only made it Colonel. Nor was he Russian, he had earned the first part of his nickname from his interest in Russia at the time. The second part had come from his favourite brand of cigarette, Virginia Slims, and was given to him by Joey Bianco, one of the vampires of New York with an enigmatic relationship to the Deadman. Lighting one of his cigarettes, he watched the others file into what he had termed the 'Briefing Room'. Sir William of Gaunt was a pretender to the throne, a Lancastrian claimant murdered by a vampire on Sir Francis Walsingham's orders. As far as Ivan could tell, Sir William had no actual connection to the throne; he was just some descendant of John of Gaunt by a working girl. Not that Ivan's claims to legitimacy were any better; he hadn't bought his commission so much as stolen it after slitting his superior officer's throat. The only one who came by her name honestly was Gertrude 'Gertie' Willems, an up and coming young lawyer who was attacked by some lads who didn't like the way she had landed them in jail. Leaving her beaten and bruised, she was then set up on by a vampire who considered himself some sort of saviour. Gertie was a tough lass though; and she didn't let it show much. Sometimes it was too much, though, and her cheerful demeanour would crack.

"So, how much we wanna bet it was the Deadman, trying to provoke us into doing our jobs?" In here, the General had no trouble relating his disaffection with Van Helsing's leadership. In public of course, he do no such thing. It would be insupportable.

Predictably, it was Sir William who blustered first. "He would do no such thing! Whatever his reputation, the Deadman is a man of honour, he..."

Much to the surprise of the other three, Van Helsing's cane rapped hard on the floor, interrupting the pompous Sir William. "That is quite enough, Sir William." Smiling, she turned to Ivan and added, "of course, it was. The operation was too precise; all set to clock. The question, therefore, is what do we do about it?"

Gertie looked pensive for a moment, and then, as if she were still sounding out her argument, replied, "Well, on the one hand, he murdered some of ours. That cannot go unanswered. On the other hand, if what we think is true, then he had to pay top dollar for wizard mercenaries. Big bill to pay just to get us of our asses."

Ivan leaned forward a little. "You don't think that this all started in a bar in Prague, do you? If so, then Tommy-boy's caught the attention of some very nasty people."

"I'm just saying that New York needs a vested interest to mess with us. They don't have enough allies to afford pissing anybody off."

"True; either way, Tommy-boy is in trouble."

Sir William scowled. "I still say that the Deadman can have nothing to do with this! Do they not call him 'the last man of honour'?"

"Yes, that is so," Lady Van Helsing muttered quietly. "But what does a man of honour do to those he considers to be without honour?"

Even the pompous Sir William had no answer to that.

Ivan spoke up, his face still pensive, "look, what Gertie said was true. The Deadman would have to have a good reason to set this up. He can't afford us to turn on him; besides the Cousins, he's no other allies. This had to have started in a bar in Prague, in a conversation between God and The Devil. And we have to play along, there's nothing for it."

"Do we?" This was Gertie. "Do we need to play along? We can raise an awful stink at the council."

"How?" Sir William piped up. Apparently convinced of the Deadman's guilt, he had decided with Ivan. "We've no proof, aside from the skill behind the attack. No, my dear, I believe the message is clear: take care of this upstart or else."

"Indeed," the Good Lady agreed. "Then we must move. Ivan, London is your territory; handle this as you will. Call The Demon, you'll need him if the rumours are true. And Godspeed, old friend."

With short bows, they exited, leaving Van Helsing there to ponder the actions taken. Pulling out a gold locket, she opened it to see the faces of two of her deceased lovers. "A dishonourable peace," she whispered, and closed the locket again. War had come; it would not go away again until everyone lay dead. God help us all.


End file.
